With each successive album, since he realized his rock god potential on 2019’s Ilana (The Creator), Nigerien singer-songwriter Mdou Moctar has been bringing more heat. Last year’s Funeral for Justice was an electric firestorm of guitar skill and trenchant political critique. Where could he possibly go from there? The opposite direction.
Well, kind of. Tears of Injustice is a companion piece to Funeral for Justice, in which Moctar and his band perform stripped-down arrangements of each plugged-in piece they release on the latter. In that sense, the two records run directly parallel, with Tears of Injustice reiterating Moctar’s unwavering beliefs in justice and human rights. Tonally, though, the switch from electric to mostly acoustic makes a tremendous difference.
Funeral for Justice was an album of martyrdom; the funeral was galvanizing, and the revolution was almost ready to boil over. Tears of Injustice is cause for mourning, for melancholy. It makes time for lamentation, knowing there is more to sustaining resistance than fighting with fire. Both put Moctar’s unparalleled musical abilities in the spotlight. However, where Funeral for Justice aligned him with Jimi Hendrix-style psych rockers, Tears of Injustice finds him following in the footsteps of performers like Abdallah Oumbadougou and Tinariwen. These are the blues, and Moctar can play them with the same nimble care with which he shreds.
The grief is to be expected. While the post-coup Nigerien crisis is officially over, the military junta in charge of the country has yet to achieve genuine stability, much less peace. The Sahel region continues to struggle for self-determination against the foreign powers manipulating events in hopes of extracting resources. When the 2023 coup first broke out, it trapped Moctar and his band in the United States, far from their home, undoubtedly one influence among many global sorrows audible throughout Tears of Injustice. (The band have since been able to return to Niger.)
Moctar does good creative work in this more traditional tishoumaren mode. Certainly, there is a familiarity to it; Moctar’s name has become synonymous with his ferocious style, while the sounds here could be from any one of a couple dozen extremely skilled, internationally-focused Kel Tamasheq groups. He has earned his place among them all and distinguished himself so successfully thus far that it feels right for him to have the chance to embrace the forms of his predecessors musically and thematically. Situated in this good company, Moctar and his band bring warmth to even their most anguished moments.
As always, it’s hard to overstate how brilliant a guitarist and bandleader Mdou Moctar is, and nothing about that changes on Tears of Injustice. His fingers speed across his strings with a perfect balance of feeling and technique. His impassioned voice soars as readily in the open space as in his usual electric fields. His band–Ahmoudou Madassane on rhythm guitar, Mikey Coltun on bass and production, and Souleymane Ibrahim on percussion–is always capable of keeping up with their trailblazing frontman. It all culminates in a gorgeous but appropriately solemn work. You don’t need to dance to Tears of Injustice. You need to listen.